On this important day when millions of people across the globe gather together for Earth Day, I sit at my desk and look at the scanner I picked up a few weeks ago. I think about the continuing trend where more of us are trading our filing cabinets for scanners, where old shoe boxes of photos have found their way on our computers )and sometimes on our wall on Facebook). In our own small way, we work together to protect the environment by digitizing our information and recycling the original copies.

As we move to a digital world where our documents, music, photos, video and personal information is digitized, we reduce our waste and environmental footprint. Unfortunately, all that information can be lost in an instant if our hard drive crashes or if a drink gets spilled on our computers. Just yesterday I received an e-mail from Mark Fuerst who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He told me he accidentally erased his records of his earnings from last year while preparing for this year’s taxes. Within a few minutes, he recovered all his information through his Mozy account. He said both he and his accountant are “eternally grateful.”

So whether you’re backing up online with Mozy or backing up to an external hard drive with an Iomega device, we encourage you to keep your data safe and keep being green.

Like it or not, March Madness is upon us. That’s right, we’re into week two of watching so much basketball that our eyes are bleeding. And what will we have to show for it, when all is said and done? For most of us, the answer is maybe a few bucks for a winning bracket and heartburn from all the nacho cheese we’ve consumed over the past few weeks. But what if you could walk away with $1000 and the peace of mind of knowing that even if your team loses and you go on a half-crazed rampage through your house and inadvertently take a sledgehammer to your computer, all your stuff is backed up?

We’re here to make that a reality (the thousand bucks and peace, not the rampage) with the Mozy March Madness Sweepstakes! There are three ways to enter:

MozyHome Free Customer – If you’re currently using MozyHome Free, all you have to do is upgrade your existing free subscription to MozyHome Unlimited account by 11:59 p.m. Pacific, March 31, 2010.

MozyHome Unlimited Customer – If you’re currently using MozyHome Unlimited, all you have to do is add an additional computer to your MozyHome Unlimited account by 11:59 p.m. Pacific, March 31, 2010.

MozyPro Customer – If you’re currently using MozyPro, all you have to do is add an additional desktop or server license to your MozyPro account by 11:59 p.m. Pacific, March 31, 2010.

We’re proud to announce the maintenance release of Mozy for Mac 1.7! Here are a few highlights from this latest release:

New and more intuitive default backup sets

Improved memory usage during backup preparation

Faster progress and better reporting when doing initial file scans

Improved speed in analyzing certain backup sets

Various stability improvements

To see the full release notes and download the new client version, check out our update sections for MozyHome and MozyPro. Please note that you don’t have to download and install the new client manually, as your old client will auto-update.

Finally, we are constantly looking for ways to improve Mozy, so if you have any comments or suggestions, please email us at support@mozy.com!

One of the things we hear about a lot is that customers want to do more with their data than just back it up. Well, today Comcast is announcing the release of Secure Backup & Share, an easy and safe way for customers to share and preserve their digital files. This service is awesome for multiple reasons, including:

Data backup – Comcast customers will be able to back up their essential files to a remote, secure location via the Internet. All Comcast customers will receive a complementary 2GB account with their subscription, with additional storage plans available.

Online access – Comcast customers’ backed-up files can be accessed and restored via the Internet – any time, anywhere.

Sharing – Once their data is backed up, users will be able to share photos, documents, music, and videos with family and friends via an easy-to-use dashboard that’s available across multiple devices.

One more thing – did we mention that this new service is powered by Mozy?

We’re thrilled to be able to partner with an industry giant like Comcast, and we’re looking forward to being able to provide the peace of mind and convenience of online data backup and sharing to their 15 million customers, starting today.

We’re proud to announce the maintenance release of Mozy for Mac 1.6.1! Here are a few highlights from this latest release:

Improved external hard drive support

Faster spotlight integration

More efficient logging

Various stability improvements

Localization fixes for multiple international markets

To see the full release notes and download the new client version, check out our update sections for MozyHome and MozyPro. Please note that you don’t have to download and install the new client manually, as your old client will auto-update.

Finally, we are constantly looking for ways to improve Mozy, so if you have any comments or suggestions, please email us at support@mozy.com!

We are once again proud to announce another Mozy for Mac release. Here are a few highlights from this latest release:

Memory and performance improvements – Making choices about which files to back up should be very fast. Backups start more quickly and use a limited amount of memory.

No longer depends on Spotlight – We now search for files using our own technology in order to avoid some inconsistencies in Apple’s.

Better support for Snow Leopard – We’ve added a file scanning progress indicator, and warnings when a backup is started before the client is fully configured and when changes might be lost when the configuration is closed without saving.

Translated into 9 non-English languages – German, Greek, British English, Castillian Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Slovenian. If you have chosen one of those languages in System Preferences, Mozy will use it automatically.

Other compatibility, stability and performance improvements.

To see the full release notes and download the new client version, check out our update sections for MozyHome and MozyPro. Please note that you don’t have to download and install the new client manually, as your old client will auto-update.

Finally, we are constantly looking for ways to improve Mozy, so if you have any comments or suggestions, please email us at support@mozy.com!

Q. So what do you get when you cross Cox Business’ awesome high-speed business class Internet products with Mozy Online Backup?

A. Cox Business Online Backup, of course!

So here’s the skinny – Cox will be offering complimentary online backup service to Cox Business Internet subscribers. Businesses will receive between 2 GB and 10 GB of online backup storage space, based on their speed of Internet service and can purchase additional capacity if needed (and if you don’t currently subscribe to Cox Business Internet, don’t worry! You can still get Cox Business Online Backup, it’s just a la carte.)

“Cox Business Online Backup powered by Mozy provides the security and flexibility indicative of a business solution and is a compelling alternative to external hard drives and stacks of CDs cluttering the desktop,” said Kristine Faulkner, vice president, product development and management, Cox Business. “Cox Business is taking another important step in combining business-class broadband speed and applications.” To that, we say huzzah!

Cox has already made Cox Business Backup available in their Southern VA markets (including Roanoke and Hampton Roads) with plans to release it in their other markets next year. We here at Mozy are thrilled to be able to work with Cox to provide safe, secure, easy to use online backup to their nearly 250,000 small business subscribers!

Your holiday gift-giving list can add up quickly, so keep it simple this year: Help others protect their holiday photos, videos, and new computers with MozyHome Unlimited and we’ll throw in a gift just for you.

Now through January 10, 2010, receive a $25 online gift card for yourself when 2 of your friends or family purchase a MozyHome Unlimited account.

You can use email, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and more to spread the word about Mozy. Just go to http://mozy.com/holiday to get started.

Best of all — you can use your online gift card however you’d like: get yourself a gift your friends and family didn’t get you or get a gift for a friend — it’s up to you.

Additionally, if you are a MozyHome Free user, you can earn an extra 512 MB of backup space for you AND your friend when they start backing up. That’s enough space to back up 250,000 text email messages, 300 photos or 100 MP3 files! Log into your account at https://mozy.com/login and click the Referrals link on the left for more information.

The holidays are upon us, and many people will be looking for a way to make extra money. Well, we here at Mozy are excited to offer a new way for you to make some cash! All you have to do is send us all your old family photos and home videos, and we’ll pay you $100 cash! I mean, those pictures and videos are OLD, right? Right? OK, so we’re not actually going to do this program, and let’s be honest, the thought of selling your family memories is somewhat preposterous (at least we think so).

We recently ran some surveys in New York City and San Francisco, where we asked people if they would be willing to sell their laptops to us, on the spot. Nearly 98% of the people we surveyed said they would be willing to sell their laptop for an average price of about a thousand dollars, or roughly the cost of the hardware. On the surface, this makes sense. After all, for a thousand dollars, you can buy yourself a brand new laptop. But then you start to think about all the stuff you carry on your laptop. If you’re like most of us, you’ll have pictures, music, videos, and work files on your laptop, and many of those are irreplaceable. All of a sudden, your laptop starts to look a lot more valuable.

We ran another set of surveys in Los Angeles where iJustine asked people if she could buy their laptop – data and all – on the spot. Just check out their responses.

Fairly telling, we think. And it just so happens that when we reminded the people we surveyed in San Francisco and New York that they would lose all of their files with the laptop, a solid 23% of them changed their minds, saying that their laptops were absolutely priceless. The fact that people changed their minds after thinking about the information contained on the laptop points out what Mozy users already know – that you can’t put a price on irreplaceable memories and information. Once digital information is gone – whether you’ve lost it to theft, disaster, or sold to a stranger on the street – you can’t get it back. Back it up.

Here at Mozy we have a lot of exceptional employees and today we are excited to congratulate one in particular for his hard work. He is a great example of what makes Mozy awesome!

This week Mozy won the Best use of Twitter award at this year’s Utah Social Media Awards from among 225 nominees. We credit Nate Karchtner from the Mozy marketing team for his continued creativity and innovative approaches to working behind the @Mozy Twitter handle. He helps Mozy engage with its customers and the tech community at large.

Nate has some great new ideas and plenty more excitement coming soon, so we encourage you to join the 6,000+ users following us on Twitter here. Additionally, check out Nate’s work on the Mozy Facebook fan page here.